1 James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are widely scattered, greeting.
2 My brethren, count it all joy when you meet with various temptations;
3 Knowing this, that the testing of your faith produces patience.
4 But let patience perform its work completely, that you may be perfect and entire, lacking nothing.
5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously, and does not criticize; and it shall be given him.
6 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavers is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.
7 For let not that man think that he shall receive anything from the Lord.
8 A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.
9 Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted:
10 But the rich, in that he is made low: because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away.
11 For the sun has no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withers the grass, and its flower falls, and the beauty of the appearance of it perishes: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways.
12 Blessed is the man who endures temptation: for when he has been tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to those who love him.
13 Let no one say when he is tempted, I am tempted by God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither does he tempt any person:
14 But each person is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed.
15 Then when lust has conceived, it brings forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, brings forth death.
16 Do not err, my beloved brethren.
17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
18 Of his own will he gave us birth with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.
19 Therefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger:
20 For the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God.
21 Therefore put away all filthiness and abundance of wickedness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.
22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.
23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like a man beholding his natural face in a mirror:
24 For he beholds himself, and goes his way, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.
25 But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty, and continues in it, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.
26 If anyone among you seems to be religious, and does not control his tongue, but deceives his own heart, this man's religion is without benefit.
27 Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.